Members of โELD or Meโ, the anti-ELD mandate group, have arrived in the Washington D.C. area for planned protest activities taking place this week.
Group members set up shop at the Doswell Truck Stop in Doswell, Va. There were a couple dozen truckers there early today, and they plan to roll into D.C. from the Doswell location. ELD or Me creator Tony Justice, who is also a trucker and singer-songwriter, is expected to arrive late this evening after a delay. He is bringing passenger vans to shuttle drivers from Doswell to downtown D.C. for the demonstration.
One of the protesters today was longtime owner-operator Riley Clay from Huntington, W.Va. He runs flatbed leased to Cardinal Transport out of Coal City, Ill. Clay runs late-model equipment, and his carrierโs been pressuring him and others leased to get on ELDs since early in the summer. โIโm one of the holdouts,โ he says. Heโs not sure what heโll do as yet, but stresses to those outside the industry that they might view the ELD mandate as a slippery slope. โWhereโs it stop?โ he asks. What if this trickles down?
Anybody can write a bill, after all, he notes. โWhatโs to stop them from requiring an inward-facing camera in your car, a breathalyzer in your car, installed at your expense? How about some kind of deviceโ to block your data and turn your phone into a hands-free-call-only device when your vehicle is rolling. โI could write a bill to do all that,โ Clay says, โand I could save a lot more than 26 lives a year,โ a reference to the estimated annual number of lives to be saved as a result of the ELD mandate in the FMCSAโs final rule.
